Orlando

Really, it’s rage that I feel.  I know that’s not appropriate.  I know I’m supposed to feel love and do what I can to spread a message of hope and healing.  That I’m supposed to sign off with #lovewins.  But in fact, I’m just sad and angry.

I am angry that Omar Mateen (let us call him by his name, and remind ourselves that this was a person) felt a zealous privilege that allowed him to slay 49 of my brothers and sisters. 

I am angry that there are people who believe he lived up to the highest ideals of a perverted cult and today rejoice in, what they call, his martyrdom.

 I am angry that the machines which whir into motion at these events have tried to characterize it in terms of Terror in an absolute sense, and not what it more accurately was – a hate crime.  That some politicians have twisted this to their personal gain (I’m looking at you Trump).  And don’t get me started that the Daily Mail didn’t think that the worst massacre of LGBTQ people since the Holocaust was worthy of their front page.

LGBTQ people live lives of careful consideration and mitigated risk.  It is a part of the fabric of our existence.  The Drag Queen Panti Bliss, more eloquently then I ever could, asked her audience to imagine the casual gesture of affection: holding your partners hand or a kiss on the cheek.  For us, those public gestures are never casual.  They are always considered.  Sometimes defiant, sometimes comfortable; but never casual. Never without thought. 

Outside of our homes, it is only in places like Pulse that we can approach casual.  That we don’t wonder, ‘is it safe to do this here.’  When Omar Mateen fired his automatic weapon and tore through the dancers that night, he not only shattered their lives and the lives of their families; he shattered all of our safety.  Destroyed the security we feel in our safe places.  Denied us our refuge.

I am angry that I have to be angry. 

But, I realise as well that rage does nothing more than stifle.  It promotes a deeper and more lasting fear and obliterates hope.  It is the antithesis to joy.  And it is joy that those people were expressing that night before they were killed.  So, later, I shall don my rainbows and I will try and fight back the rage and the recrimination and share a moment of solidarity with Orlando.  True, from far away.  But that doesn’t matter.  We all need to feel safe. Love needs to win.